re: 2016 Auburn Football Recruiting Thread

Just because I'm able to question something, doesn't mean that I'm pumping "all hope is lost". Are some of you fricking serious? I've been following recruiting seriously a lot longer than most of you, including Ellitor who acts like the Pope of Recruiting.

I'm just saying: we took one OT last year, a kid who is a huge project physically and who may not even be anything more than average even if he pans out. We're three months into this class and we've had several elite early targets commit elsewhere, one of whom we supposedly cooled on because "something happened" on his visit (which is ironic considering we have no problem taking other schools' castoffs...just saying), and another whom we supposedly didn't push for because he's not the 6'7 LT prototype. Now today one of our sleeper upside prospects committed to Duke, and according to Pope Ellitor we really don't even know who our top target is yet . Apparently its the Mormon JUCO kid from Utah who's never even visited?

All hope isn't lost, but you're getting to about the point in time where we need to stop crawling and instead start sprinting because guys WILL start flying off the board. We want 3 OT's in the class and we don't even have one that you can say we legitimately lead for. The closest being Marcus Tatum who just as easily could be a Florida lean.

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We're three months into this class

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As I just mentioned, OT is a weird position to recruit since so many kids are still growing at JR year 16/17 YOs + few have started putting on the weight to become dominant.


If by Camp season we don't have real targets/options then I will be mad though

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Why in the world would we sign 5 OL? If we were to sign 5 we would have 17-19 scholarsihps tied up in OL.

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We lose probably 4 OL after this year (Danzey, Dampeer, Young, Coleman). 5 may be one too high, but if we are taking 3 OT's as planned then I bet we take at least one interior guy on top of that. We have another 4 on roster who are currently Juniors/Redshirt Juniors who are essentially on their last legs as well.

OL isn't a position that you want to wait for guys to leave before you worry about replacing them. We'll lose a lot of guys in these next 2 years; literally most on the current roster. Guys like Leff and Adams may not even stick around for their 5th year if they aren't playing.

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to shortly reply to your post. Trying to say that we're falling behind on OT recruiting is dumb. Elite OL, moreso than just about any other position, is a crapshoot and more guys tend to pop up later in the process just due to sheer growth needed to be an OT. Some guys aren't 6'6 until they become Srs in HS. May be a 6'3, 270lb guard with great feet and long arms that ends up 6'6 after his Sr year. It happens.

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OT was a need last year and we most definitely did not pick up any late-blooming superstars. In fact, the one guy we were hitching our trailer to (Ivey) was a known elite recruit for well over a full year prior to signing day. The Nigerian kid reclassified (doesn't count as popping up late as he was a known talent) and we passed up on him; we'll see if we blew it there if/when his qualification settles. There were no other "pop-up" prospects for us, otherwise we would have taken said "pop-up" over Mike Horton (another OG).

I'm well aware that OL is hard to project and that kids could pop-up, but the reality is that even if some worthwhile talents pop up, it doesn't even mean they want to come to Auburn. What if all the "pop-up" kids are West Coast or Midwest and therefore have zero interest in coming to Auburn?

If your argument is that we'll have 3 top-level SEC caliber OT's conveniently pop up for us, then you're going to have a bad time. In reality "pop-up" kids are less likely in the South where kids can train football year-round and are therefore evaluated extremely early. Its possible, but even under that scenario you've got a shite-load of competition that will be just as interested in wooing said kid.

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@Puma_Blessed2: Thinking about commiting at @TheOpening !!

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Jawon Pass.

No

Check in on the recruiting thread to see a bunch of all is lost and bitching.

Glad to see things haven't changed since Feburary

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Metafour, what KK is pointing out is that most of the kids who are growing into OTs and popping up start to do so during summer camps. Most kids don't finish growing by JR season and they only start to showcase their size come spring/summer. A ton of guys haven't been able to show their new frames in the past 9 months of growing

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March/April Camps are the new "Summer Camps". If you haven't noticed by now; the Nike/etc. camp circuit is already in full effect. The Nike NFTC/Opening camps have already taken place in Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, New Orleans...basically all of the regions where we're actually going to be seriously evaluating targets. Most of these kids have therefore already camped.

Yeah, we'll have our own camps and there may be a few kids that for whatever reason haven't been able to camp anywhere yet, but you guys are seriously overlooking the speed at which recruiting moves at nowadays. This isn't like the Tuberville era where we're doing the majority of our evaluation at our own Summer camps; the vast majority of these kids have already been "seen". One of our latest offers went out to OT Tony Gray after his performance at the Opening Atlanta Regional...he's a freaking 2017 kid. 2017 and he's already an elite recruit.

But if you want to believe that there are a ~dozen kids who will all grow ~3-4 inches and become top OT prospects out of nowhere, then go ahead. Most of the actual prospects have been camping since LAST spring/summer (or earlier). Just how many no-names do you expect to blow up?

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metafour

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I don't think anyone disagrees that recruiting starts way earlier and that it is concerning we don't have any elite OT targets we are clearly in on.

Most people just say that OT/OL in general takes time to shake out and it is too early to tell compared to say WR/LB/CB/RB